I don’t think it matters if you’re “good enough” or not. Much of AI development is iterative. If you context switch between A from project 1 to B from project 2 back to check A, then maybe C while B finishes up, you will lose the flow state that AI assistance can enable with speed for those who are not fluent coders.

Sure, I can wait hours for my local model to finish, or I can spend basically as much and get the answer right away

There’s a lot of exciting stuff with local LLMs despite the speed, but for me I don’t have the discipline and working memory to jump from project to project.